Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program, and I am your host,

Richard Wolfe. I want to begin today with a shout-out to a group of workers who have

just successfully formed a union. It's happening all across the United States, but this one bears

special mention. Why? Well, it takes a while for workers to recognize in many cases that that's what they are,

workers.

And one of these stories told by employers to dissuade workers from forming unions is to suggest

they aren't really workers.

Maybe they're different in this way or that way.

And then, of course, after a while, it becomes clear, you may be different.

You may have more education, less education, live over here, do that, have this skill,

but in the end, you're a source of profit for the employer, and they end up treating you that way.

And that's why I'm telling you today's story.

It has to do with the Icon Mount Sinai School of Medicine. That is a very large, very well-known

school of medicine in New York City that has about 500 postdoctoral researchers. Much of the breakthroughs in medicine that we all take

for granted or hope for are accomplished by people who've had their training, they're postdoctoral.

They've gotten their doctor's degrees, and they're doing research in the core of a major medical institution.

An icon Mount Sinai in New York City is one of those.

Well, the 500 postdoc researchers there formed a Sinai postdoc organizing committee,

and together with the well-established United

Auto Workers, they went to work to build a union because they did not like the way the moneyed

interests sitting at the top of that hospital and medical school were treating them. And in June of this year, they got their vote,

supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. All the postdocs, all 500 of them had a chance

...